"Rufus tole Kunnel Jamison your mama killed one of the overseers and that's how come he hit her so hard with his quirt," Hatcher said. "That was the lie he covered his ass with. He beat Sarie's brains out 'cause she sunk her teeth in his hand, and I mean plumb down to the bone. I don't know about no African king in her background, but she was one ferocious nigger when she got a board up her cheeks."
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Flower felt the gallery tilt under her, as though she were on board a ship. The wind gusted and a tree slapped the side of the house and rain swept under the eaves.
"They said she was kicked by a horse. She shot the overseer and tried to run away and a horse trampled her," she said.
"That's the story the kunnel wanted us to tell folks. He didn't want other white people knowing his slaves got beat to death. You don't believe me, look at that half-moon scar on Rufus's left hand."
"Leave my property," she said.
"I'm hell-bound, Flower. I kilt my old woman. Look at my face. Devil's done got my soul already. Ain't got no reason to deceive you," he said.
Then he plunged into the rain and mounted his horse, jerking its head about with the reins and slashing it viciously with his boot heels at the same time.
But he had set the hook and set it deep.
SHE went to the school that evening and taught her classes but said nothing to Abigail about Clay Hatcher's visit. That night she dreamed of a man's callused, sun-browned hand, the heel half-mooned with a string of tiny gray pearls. She woke in the morning to the sound of more thunder. She started a fire in her woodstove and fixed coffee and drank it while she watched the wind flatten the cane in the fields and wrinkle the water in her yard. Then she put on a gum coat and wrapped a bandanna on her head, and with her parasol popped open in front of her face she began the long walk down to Rufus Atkins' tent.
The convicts building his house were working under tarps. An empty jail wagon sat forlornly under the live oak in front. Bearded, filthy, lesioned with scabs, the convicts stared at her from the scaffolding as she passed on the plank walkway. Then a guard yelled at them in French and their hammers recommenced a rhythmic smacking against nails and wood.
Sin' pulled open the flap on Atkins' tent and stepped inside. I le was standing it a table, studying the design of his house, his white shirt and dark pants unspotted by the rain. An oil lamp burned above his head, lighting the grainy texture of his face and the flat, hazel eyes that never allowed people to read his thoughts.
He placed one hand on his hip, his booted feet forming a right angle, like a fencer's.
"I don't know what it is, but it's trouble of one kind or another. So get to it and be on your way," he said.
"Clay Hatcher came to my house last night," she said.
"You should have gone for the sheriff. He went crazy and killed his wife. You didn't hear about it?"
His left hand rested on the table, behind him, in a pool of shadow.
"How did my mother die?" she asked.
"Sarie? A horse ran her down," he replied. His face seemed to show puzzlement.
But Rufus Atkins had made a lifetime study of not revealing his emotions about anything, she thought. Not even puzzlement. So why now?
"She shot a man, Flower. Right in the head. Then took off running," he said, although she had not challenged his statement.
"She'd just given birth."
He shook his head. "I'm telling you how it happened, girl." He raised his left hand and touched at his nose with his wrist. Then she saw it, a barely noticeable half-circle of tiny scars on the rim of his hand.
Her gum coat felt like an oven on her body. She could smell all of his odors in the tent's stale air-testosterone, unwashed hair, shaving water that hadn't been thrown out, a thunder mug in a corner. She unbuttoned her coat and pulled her bandanna off her head and pushed her hair out of her eyes, as though she were rising out of dark water that was crushing the air from her lungs.
"She bit you and you beat her to death," Flower said.
"Now, hold on there." He looked at her open coat and at her hands and involuntarily backed away from her, knocking into the tent pole. The oil lamp clattered above his head.
She stepped toward him and saw his mouth open, his hand clench on the edge of the table.
"I can hurt you Fower. Don't make me do it," he said.
She gathered all the spittle in her mouth and spat it full in his face.
RAIN swept in sheets across the wetlands throughout the day, then the storm intensified and bolts of lightning trembled like white-hot wires in the heart of the swamp, igniting fires among the cypress trees. Long columns of smoke flattered across the canopy and hung on the fields and roads in a dirty gray vapor.